Development and assembly of a Virtual Database of Allergens, with Emphasis on Molecular Modeling and Prediction of Immunogenicity

• Grant number: 08/08502-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: February 01, 2009
• End date: January 31, 2012
• Field of knowledge: Health Sciences - Medicine - Medical Clinics
• Principal Investigator: Fabio Fernandes Morato Castro
• Grantee: Helen Andrade Arcuri
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Medicina (FM). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The allergies are a serious health problem, with the incidence of reported cases increasing steadily. It is estimated that around 15% to 25% of people suffer from some form of allergy, taking it as soon to be among the main causes of diseases and public health problems worldwide. The number of allergens characterized and related information are increasing rapidly, making it necessary to develop more sophisticated techniques for storage, retrieval and analysis of these data. The bioinformatics is emerging as an innovative field in this area, with useful tools to manage, store and analyze information about these allergens and the development of specific applications and algorithms for identifying epitopes, predicting the allergenicity, predicting the cross-reactivity, structural and functional characterization, recognition of motifs allergens, grouping on the type of family, among others. A number of research groups worldwide are working on the study of allergens in order to develop more effective vaccines and therapies for allergenics diseases, so the amount of information available on the web has grown exponentially generating scattered and redundant information, being necessary to consult various sources for information about the allergens, which entails a delay to find a specific information about a specific allergen to which we need more information. This project of Post Doc aims to general construction of a Beowulf cluster for the development and integration of tools of bioinformatics applied to the study of allergens providing this information through a database cured public. The main objective of creating a web server where we will concentrate the widest possible range of information about allergens eliminated the problem of dispersed and redundant information, improve the existing tools to identify more effectively the potential allergenicity of new proteins in genetically modified (transgenic or mutagenesis) and its potential to generate cross-reactivity and develop new tools to perform efficiently thus enabling the virtual screening check the interaction between antibodies and antigens contributing to a better understanding of the process of awareness of allergens in susceptible individuals, the progress achieved in these studies raising and characterization of these allergens can contribute in the development of vaccines more effective in the treatment of allergies using sedimentadas well as the methodologies used to verify interaction between protein-ligand, for example the model key-lock